Alright. So, here's the top-50 blueadams ranked players in the league. METHODOLOGY. I used six statistics, WAR/RPM, EWA/PER and WS/WS-48. I found the top-50 ranking players in each of the six categories. I found each of those players rankings in the other five categories. And I averaged out all six rankings for a final, composite ranking.

Disclaimer of so-so importance. Greg Monroe's composite ranking is 69. I only wrote down the top-50 in each of the six categories, to start off. If someone was ranked 68th in all six categories, for instance, he'd be ranked ahead of Greg Monroe and I wouldn't have included him.

It's pretty unlikely that such a player would exist. And I certainly didn't notice anyone consistently in the top-100 or so of the categories who's name I hadn't put down for at least one elsewhere. But I guess it is possible that I could have missed someone, however unlikely, so I thought that I'd at least mention it.

.....I guess it's a moot point, as I've now grown to like a plan that keeps both Monroe and Smith. But. I do think Monroe is a better leader, and I disagree with some of your other negative assertions there (subjective opinion argument that neither of us is going to win). Dragic, Ariza and Lowry are all great 3-pt shooters that go a long way in addressing spacing problems. Furthermore, I like Monroe as a passer at the top of the key (or far enough outside the paint) alongside Drummond. He still doesn't have much of a shot from there, and I guess he is an average to below average cutter, but I do think that he's better on the drive from there than you give him credit for.

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Don't get me wrong, Monroe is a fantastic player. But right now he is worth more as trade bait than he is playing. We are a losing team because we are weak at 3 of the 5 positions. It makes sense to trade a good C/PF to strengthen PG/SG/SF. Because he is young and productive, he is far more tradeable than JSmoove.

blueadams said:

.....Chris Anderson is set to make 1.5M next season. He is 35 years old. I don't know -- but given what I do know about his past -- I'm guessing that he is not financially set for the rest of his life. The Pistons could offer him a maximum MLE of +5.15M over 5yrs, or about 26 Million Dollars. Think he and his would be intrigued by that?

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I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Locking up a 35 year old energy guy off the bench for 5 years(which we can't do anyway because the new cba has a maximum duration of 4 years)? Is this the day we can all say you have truly lost the plot? Of course he would be interested, but who on earth is going to pay him that much? Certainly not anyone in the business of running a basketball team. Maybe we should start discussing multi-year contracts for Steve Nash/Jermaine O'Neal/Camby or we can just go the whole mile and bring Big Ben out of retirement for a few more years.

blueadams said:

.....The Suns were aggressively shopping him, and reportedly not asking for much THIS deadline. He's still largely undervalued by a player, and -- seemingly -- especially by his own front-office. If we can acquire him for that '14/'15 pick (or hell, even another future pick if that's what it takes), I'd be more than glad to go over the cap and give him his eight figure contract as a Bird's rights FA.

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I love Goran Dragic. I think he is an amazing player. But lets recap - the Suns have this other guy called Eric Bledsoe who will also command a massive salary and who they gave up a bunch of stuff to get. Also, he isn't undervalued, anyone who even casually watches the NBA knows that he is one of the most exciting players in the league. The fact that he was being shopped proves nothing, just that the FO realised there was an overlap of position strength and that he would walk because they wouldn't have enough money to meet his contract demands. The Suns are in the playoff picture right now and may want to keep him.

blueadams said:

.....ESPN's projecting him at 5.7M, now. I've penciled him in at almost twice that, 9M. His absolute maximum contract would be 17.4M. Post-acquiring Dragic, the maximum contract we could offer him is 14.5M. I don't think Toronto'd be willing to go that high. We could. Then.. scratch Anderson, use the MLE on Ariza.

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ESPN projections are generally based on WARP x arbitrary salary factor. Don't pay much attention to them. Also, which espn article are you referring to? The one I just looked at has 8.7m and I believe it will go higher than that.

blueadams said:

...Respectuflly, you pay attention to the wrong things, sir.

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That statement holds no value. Trevor Ariza is a league average player for ten years, now in his late 20's and has had a one year resurgence mostly buoyed by his 3pt shooting. Sure, he is a plus wing defender and I like that, but expect his production to falter in Detroit.

We traded either our 14, 15 or 16 pick. We still own two of those three picks, and we can trade either of them if we like.

And I have no idea what you mean by "Generally speaking you can't have cap space while holding onto players either, right?". We can go up to the cap to sign free agents. We can then go over the cap to resign our own free agents. We can then use the MLE and go further over the cap.

We traded either our 14, 15 or 16 pick. We still own two of those three picks, and we can trade either of them if we like.

And I have no idea what you mean by "Generally speaking you can't have cap space while holding onto players either, right?". We can go up to the cap to sign free agents. We can then go over the cap to resign our own free agents. We can then use the MLE and go further over the cap.

We traded either our 14, 15 or 16 pick. We still own two of those three picks, and we can trade either of them if we like.

And I have no idea what you mean by "Generally speaking you can't have cap space while holding onto players either, right?". We can go up to the cap to sign free agents. We can then go over the cap to resign our own free agents. We can then use the MLE and go further over the cap.

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You can't trade two picks in a row and we don't know when we are losing ours. So if we get a pick this draft we can't trade with a first rounder until either we fall out of the lottery next year or the pick is officially transferred. Otherwise we can trade the first year after the pick becomes unprotected.

Ariza defends his position well and he's an excellent 3-pt shooter. What's so bad about that? No one ever said he was Kevin Durant.

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He is a career 34.7% 3 point shooter. So this year is an anomaly. I said before that I think he is a plus defender. For comparison, Kyle Singler shoots 36.6% and is also a plus defender by all accounts. He gets paid $1m per year.

He is a career 34.7% 3 point shooter. So this year is an anomaly. I said before that I think he is a plus defender. For comparison, Kyle Singler shoots 36.6% and is also a plus defender by all accounts. He gets paid $1m per year.

You can't trade two picks in a row and we don't know when we are losing ours. So if we get a pick this draft we can't trade with a first rounder until either we fall out of the lottery next year or the pick is officially transferred. Otherwise we can trade the first year after the pick becomes unprotected.

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I think it have to be two years after the pick becomes unprotected, otherwise we'll trade our pick two years in a row. The earliest 1st rounder we can trade is 2018.

Nate Silver used the same methodology as blue did in his prediction model for the presidential election 2012 (he nailed 50/50 states). He took a bunch of polls and aggregated with some clever weighting. It's taking wisdom of the crowds one more step to wisdom of the polls.

Wiki:

During the U.S. presidential primaries and general election of 2008, the site compiled polling data through a unique methodology derived from Silver's experience in baseball sabermetrics to "balance out the polls with comparative demographic data"[3] and "weighting each poll based on the pollster's historical track record, sample size, and recentness of the poll".[4]

You should normalize this with the weighted average or something, otherwise the stat with the highest spread will have the highest weight in the formula. An example is PER and WS/48 where the best players have 30 vs 0.2.

You can't trade two picks in a row and we don't know when we are losing ours. So if we get a pick this draft we can't trade with a first rounder until either we fall out of the lottery next year or the pick is officially transferred. Otherwise we can trade the first year after the pick becomes unprotected.

He is a career 34.7% 3 point shooter. So this year is an anomaly. I said before that I think he is a plus defender. For comparison, Kyle Singler shoots 36.6% and is also a plus defender by all accounts. He gets paid $1m per year.

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1) I don't get where this "you can't trade two picks in a row" thing is coming from? I've never heard of it. And didn't we trade two 1st rd. picks in a row to acquire 'Sheed?

2) If we get to keep our pick this year -- and we'll know about that soon -- why wouldn't we be able to trade it?

3) If we don't get to keep our pick this year -- and, again, we'll know that soon -- why wouldn't we be able to trade our '15 pick?

4) It's common for players to become better outside shooters as they age, is it not? I'd like to see a year-by-year breakdown of Ariza's percentages.

Nate Silver used the same methodology as blue did in his prediction model for the presidential election 2012 (he nailed 50/50 states). He took a bunch of polls and aggregated with some clever weighting. It's taking wisdom of the crowds one more step to wisdom of the polls.

Wiki:

You should normalize this with the weighted average or something, otherwise the stat with the highest spread will have the highest weight in the formula. An example is PER and WS/48 where the best players have 30 vs 0.2.

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I used "ranking." So, like "1" for best. "50" for 50th best. "128" for 128th best. etc.

1) Draft Stauskas.
2) Don't renounce Monroe.
3) Sign Lowry -- even with Monroe's current salary counting against the cap, or his qualifying offer salary counting against the cap, there's still enough cap space to offer Lowry a max deal, if necessary.
4) Resign Monroe, going over the cap, if necessary.
5) Use the MLE, going over the cap, if necessary, to sign Ariza.